UPDATE | Baikonur Service Tower Damaged After Soyuz MS-28 Mission Launch

The launch of the Soyuz MS-28 crew vehicle from Site 31/6 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome resulted in a major incident where the mobile service platform, also known as the service cabin (8U0216), collapsed into the flame duct below the launch pad.

This event rendered the facility, Russia’s only operational launch pad for crewed missions to the International Space Station (ISS), essentially unusable. The collapse occurred despite the service platform being designed to retract into a protective niche under the pad and be shielded by a blast shield before launch.

The service platform is a critical structure that provides access to the lower stages of the Soyuz rocket during pre-launch processing, including connections for fuel and oxidizer lines and access to structural supports.

The damage to the platform, including deformation of access bridges and structural elements, has raised serious concerns about the continuity of crewed and cargo launches from Baikonur. The launch of the Progress MS-33 cargo ship, scheduled for December 21, 2025, is now at risk of disruption.

Preliminary assessments indicate that repairs to the service platform could take up to two years, and no immediate temporary solutions have been identified to maintain launch operations. The incident has prompted discussions about potential alternatives, such as utilizing duplicate hardware from the mothballed Site 1 at Baikonur, or from other Soyuz launch facilities at Plesetsk, Vostochny, or even the former Kourou pad in French Guiana. However, these options are complicated by logistical and technical challenges.

Site 31/6 has a long history, originally established in 1958 as a backup launch complex for the R-7 ICBM and later re-purposed for orbital launches, including crewed missions. It became a key site for Soviet and Russian spaceflight, supporting early missions like Soyuz-4 in 1969 and later serving as the primary launch site for the Soyuz-2.1a rocket family, which now carries both crew (Soyuz MS) and cargo (Progress) missions to the ISS.

Crewed launches resumed from Site 31 in 2012 after a 28-year gap, and it has since been the exclusive launch site for Russian crewed missions to the ISS. The facility has also hosted 400 launches in total, including the 400th launch in April 2020 with Soyuz MS-16.

The collapse of the service tower on the day of the Soyuz MS-28 launch marks a significant setback for Russia’s human spaceflight program, threatening the reliability of its access to the ISS and potentially impacting international crew rotations and cargo delivery schedules.

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A Soyuz-2.1a rocket launched the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 0927 UTC(Nov. 27), carrying three crew members—NASA astronaut Christopher Williams and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergey Mikayev—to the International Space Station (ISS).

The spacecraft docked with the ISS's Rassvet nadir port at 1234 UTC, completing a rapid three-hour rendezvous, with hatch opening at 1516 UTC.

The MS-28 crew were welcomed aboard the ISS as Expedition 73/74 members, by the existing seven members of Expedition 73 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineers Alexey Zubritsky and Oleg Platonov of Roscosmos; Jonny Kim, Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui greeted Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev and Williams after the hatches opened followed by a "sit down" for a feast.

Williams will be eating his Thanksgiving Day dinner in Earth orbit. Although they are not the first crew to celebrate Thanksgiving in space, the Soyuz MS-28 trio are the first to launch and dock on the holiday day in the United States.

"The kid who played basketball in the driveway with his cousins before Thanksgiving dinner is now a flight engineer on the three-man crew for Expedition 74," wrote Juan Williams, a civil rights historian and Chris' uncle, in a recent column for The Hill newspaper. "Chris's incredible trip to space is rooted in incredible family trips. His grandmother took a voyage to a new world in 1958. She traveled with three children on a freighter boat carrying bananas from Panama to Brooklyn, New York."

"This Thanksgiving, I am grateful to live in a country where the grandson of Panamanian immigrants can represent America in the heavens, on a mission of peace and science," wrote the elder Williams.

"This is my second Thanksgiving in space, so I highly recommend it," said Fincke in a recorded video released by NASA ahead of the holiday. "This time it is going to be with a new Soyuz crew and we're getting food ready, so we have the traditions like turkey [and] there is some cranberry sauce here."

The food lab at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston prepared a special "Holiday Bulk Overwrapped Bag" (BOB) that arrived with a cargo delivery in September. "We have got everything here from turkey and the traditional things that Mike mentioned, some mashed potatoes, to crab meat, salmon and we even have some lobster, which is amazing!" said Cardman.

After the holiday and the return to Earth by Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim aboard Soyuz MS-27 in early December, Kud-Sverchkov, Mikaev and Williams, together with Cardman, Fincke, Yui and Platonov will form the new Expedition 74 crew. During their planned stay, the Soyuz MS-28 trio will help carry out hundreds of science experiments and technology demonstrations, as well as conduct possible spacewalks and perform station maintenance as needed.

Williams will help install and test the European Enhanced Exploration Exercise Device (E4D), a modular workout system for long-duration missions that combines bicycling, rowing and resistive capabilities together with rope pulling and climbing. He will also conduct studies to improve cryogenic fuel efficiency and grow semiconductor crystals, as well as assist NASA in developing revised re-entry safety protocols to protect crew members during future missions.

Kud-Sverchkov and Mikaev will be the first cosmonauts to be aided by GigaChat, an artificial intelligence (AI) bot that through both voice and tablet inputs will help make decisions about the operation of the Russian segment of the space station.

Williams, 42, a NASA astronaut and physicist, is on his first spaceflight, Kud-Sverchkov, who logged 185 days in space as a flight engineer on the station's Expedition 63/64 crew in 2021, is on his second spaceflight, while Mikayev is making his first journey to space. The crew, flying under the call sign "Gyrfalcon," will spend approximately 240 days aboard the ISS, with a planned return to Earth on July 26, 2026, landing in the Kazakh Steppe.

Kud-Sverchkov, 42, worked as a rocket engineer for RSC Energia before being selected as a cosmonaut in 2010. Mikaev, 39, was flying as a military pilot in the Russian Air Force when he was recruited for spaceflight training in 2018.

Williams has a doctorate in physics, studied supernovae using the Very Large Array radio telescope and completed residency training at Harvard that later led to him developing new image guidance techniques for cancer treatment. He joined NASA in 2021 and is the second member of his class ("The Flies") to fly into space.

The Soyuz MS-28 mission(or ISS 74S) operated by Roscosmos marks the first crewed flight of the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft, which was reassigned after its originally scheduled vehicle, MS-28 No. 759, sustained damage to its heat shield during testing.

The Soyuz-2.1a launch vehicle and payload fairing arrived at Baikonur by rail on October 22, 2025, and final preparations, including system checks and tests, were completed in early November.